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Hitwise Intelligence - Bill Tancer - North America

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Heelys - Search and Brand Equity

August 14, 2008

Yesterday's news of Skechers offer to acquire Heelys for $142.8 million brought flashbacks of tweens reaching near terminal velocity at my local shopping mall (on the down-ramp near California Pizza Kitchen), but that flashback is an old memory by Internet standards. Today there are very few sightings of shoe-sliding kids.

I turned to our search term volume chart on "Heelys" to determine what search data might reveal about the wheeled-shoe trend, specifically, was the local decline I noticed part of a national trend? Here's a chart based on our U.S. sample of 10 million Internet users (with Heelys weekly closing stock price superimposed).

While Heelys is planning to diversify their footwear line away from the wheeled variety, it strikes me that companies in the process of acquiring retail brands might want to consider the power of search term volume as a proxy for a retail brand's equity. Also of note, while its not always the case, here stock price and weekly search term volume appear to correlate very nicely.

Posted by Bill Tancer at 12:41 PM | (0) | (0)